


only wind and emptiness

by dallisons



Category: FBI (TV 2018)
Genre: Character Death, Cuddling & Snuggling, Established Relationship, F/M, Flashbacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-18 03:47:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16987476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dallisons/pseuds/dallisons
Summary: At 2:56am, her phone buzzes in her pocket. She waits out the ring; there's movement on the front stoop.





	only wind and emptiness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Doranwen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doranwen/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy! It was a lot of fun to write, even when it was painful.

**HEY, BABE.**

Maggie doesn't even look up. Forms and paperwork are spread out across the table, clearly deliniated; on one side, her casefile, on the other, Jason's story research. She thinks for the thousandth time that they need an actual large corkboard or something, but Jason feels like that would be indulging their bad habit of working too much from home. 

It's nice, at least, to share it.

"Baaaaabe," she hears again, sing-songing from the kitchen.

Maggie stays focused, but her mouth moves, almost on its own: "Adult who is my fiancé, do you need something?" 

She's been on the same family for months. The Kovačevićs aren't the sharpest, for the most part, but the mother is an absolute lioness who keeps the rest in line. It's an interesting case, one she's been digging her hands into longer and longer every night, but her temples are throbbing a little and the words seem to get smaller with every hour that passes. 

Now that she's paused for a moment, the house  _does_ smell good. She hears footsteps transferring from tile to hardwood as Jason exits the kitchen, perching on the corner of the table with a spoon in hand, his other palm carefully beneath it so he won't drop sauce all over her files. He's smiling, his eyes crinkled at the corners. "I need your opinion."

She sets down her pen, leaning forward to accept the offering. It's chicken and some sort of small pasta, with a sauce that's sweet and spicy at the same time. It does the job of waking her up, at the very least, and after a moment she has to admit it's divine. 

"I think that's worth... one more 'babe', at least."

He laughs, and it still makes her stomach flip, just a tiny, little bit. No one said she had to  _stop_ having a crush on her fiancé once he proposed, after all. 

"One more 'babe' and a 'honey' in public."

She rolls her eyes, grabbing at the pen again and making a shooing motion with her hand. "You're pushing it."

He pushes off from the table, but doesn't move back toward the kitchen, instead digging his thumbs into the knot at the back of her neck. She sighs, eyes closed, pen drooping in her hand.

"Not honey. Not even for that." She takes a deep breath. "Maybe another 'babe'." 

He leans down again, breath fanning over her ear. "i'm gonna call you babe for the rest of my life. Isn't that crazy?" Jason presses a kiss to her temple. "I promise I'll earn them." 

"You better."

 

**GETTING TIRED.**

When you get married for the first time, as an agent, people tell you to make time for each other. People worry. There's that old adage about being married to the job, and for a lot of people, it holds strong.

It helps, then, when your partner is also married to the job. Mostly.

Maggie currently feels decidedly  _un-_ helped. She's on probation; sometimes, she thinks, men shouldn't be allowed in supervisory positions. Just because she wants to talk more than she wants to shoot her gun, it makes her questionable, makes people wonder where her loyalties lie. Why should she pull a weapon every time she confronts a perp? That's not any way to make a difference, but to the damned old dogs on this team, it's a necessary performance.

One of these days, her disobedience may cost her this job, but it won't be this time.

Dad taught her integrity, even when people want her to back down. Even when she probably should. 

 _But._ This light work _is_ making her crazy.

She's home at five every day, like a good girl with a normal office job. It's suffocating, and it makes her want to scream. Normally, by the time she gets home, Jason can put away the investigation a moment and just  _be_ with her, but as she's slowing down, he's picked up. He won't tell her — he never does, until he knows it's a done deal — but he's got a big one, right between his teeth.

She's happy for him. It makes her so jealous she's surprised she hasn't turned actually green.

There's a book in her lap, long legs stretched along the couch as Jason sits in the nearby armchair, 3x5 index cards all over the floor, some with photos attached. She doesn't bother trying to read them; he'll tell her when he's ready, and they've done this before. Jason's shorthand scrawl is basically illegible, anyway.

She misses him. Maggie can admit that being on the receiving end,  _without_ dishing, is a little lonely. Maybe that's why so many relationships don't work out for people in their career fields. It makes her pushy and a bit irritable, but Jason is doing good work, and —

Sometime between reading and bitter thoughts, Maggie falls asleep. She only realizes when she hums, sleepy, at the feeling of weight on the couch cushions with her. Big, warm hands grab her by the waist as Jason lays down too, moving her body to sprawl half on top of his so they can both fit.

"Not big enough," she murmurs, but he's warm and she doesn't want to move, either. If he  _wants_ her to crush him, that sounds fine.

He laughs, sounding too awake, but it's a quiet sound. It doesn't disturb her little cocoon of weariness in the least. "I missed you," he murmurs back.

That's nice. She rubs her face on his shirt for a moment, feeling the rise and fall of his chest. "Me too."

They both wake up before dawn, with aches in strange places, but it's the best sleep she's managed in days. 

 

**HEADING HOME.**

Maggie rolls over in the passenger seat, curling up a little on her side with her hands beneath her head. She loves watching him drive. It's one of the few things where she feels very much like a silly little girl, because as great a driver as she is, there's something delicious about watching him do it, instead.

That's the thing about finding your person. You can be ridiculous and silly all you want, with them.

"You ready for this?" she asks, watching the grin spread across his face in profile. He's met her family before, but not after proposing —  _without_ asking her dad first, to boot. "Don't let them make you feel like a suspect."

Jason reaches over the center console to brush a hand through her hair, soft and warm. "I am a suspect. Guilty as charged: I want to marry the hell out of you, after all."

She scrunches up her face a moment before giving in to the laughter bubbling inside her. One of the things she pretends to hate the most is how cheesy Jason is. He's an award-winning journalist who somehow makes  _dad_ jokes without even being a dad, yet.

Something hitches in her chest, at that thought. A little Jason with eyes crinkled at the corners. Not now, but later, when they have the time and patience to devote to that sort of thing. She's never been seen as motherly by anyone she knows, but there's a surge of emotion in her as she can imagine the scene.

Jason's so good at taking care of people. It makes her want to be better, too.

 

**CAN'T WAIT TO SEE YOU.**

Work trips are usually the worst part of her job, but this one hasn't been bad. Maybe it's because she isn't actually doing much crime solving — instead, she's giving a seminar on her work with the bureau, facing students, not perpetrators. In a way, they're more intimidating, asking questions she actually has to answer.

It feels good, to make a difference in this way. Without a chance of bloodshed. 

It's colder than it has any right to be in Virginia this time of year, and she shivers stepping into the lobby of her hotel, sliding a scarf from her neck. It's as she turns her head that she sees him, just a flash, head down, bent over his laptop. She freezes, rigid even as a smile spreads across her face.  _No._

Maggie pushes through a crowd of tourists in the lobby, scarf still clutched absently in her hand as she approaches the table, the movement catching from the corner of his eye and causing Jason's head to turn. The smile he gives her is breathtaking and unexpected and it makes her heart pound.

"What are you doing here?" she breathes, cheeks hot (from the cold, obviously, nothing more than that).

Jason stands, one of the few people big enough to feel small, and pulls her into his arms. She holds him tightly enough that she's probably squishing him, but that doesn't matter. His voice in her ear is so warm she wants to curl up in it forever. 

"I finished my last story and Helen told me to get gone and stay gone." His hand is a steady weight on the back of her neck, her breathing evening out. No matter where they are, Jason is what feels like home. "I couldn't think of anywhere else I wanted to be."

She pulls away and looks at where he's set himself up, in a corner, laptop and snacks all over the place. "Why are you out here?"

Mirth dances in his eyes. "They didn't let me in. Said I wasn't on the room."

"That's what you get," she tells him, hand on his face, "for not taking  _my_ last name."

 

**I LOVE YOU.** **BYE.**

At 2:56am, her phone buzzes in her pocket. She waits out the ring; there's movement on the front stoop. She's been on this surveillance job for 20 hours already, and she wants to go home so badly she aches with it. Jason was going to take her out; they haven't had a date in months, and Maggie imagines how nice it would have been, a glass of wine and Jason's laughter in the air.

He's working on something big, but he was going to carve out time just for them, until her boss came in. Bastard.

She lifts the binoculars to her face once again, and watches as the movement turns out to be a cat. With a sigh, she sets them down again and puts a chip in her mouth, focusing on the crunch rather than mind-numbing boredom. It feels like hours when she feels her phone buzz again, and looks forward to checking it. Sometimes, Jason will spam her when she's on a mission like this, so she can read them all when she gets off work and tease him for how cheesy he is.

Only it doesn't stop at a text. It keeps buzzing, until she gets so annoyed she has to take it out, protocol be damned. She has 47 missed calls.

At 4:17am, Maggie Bell takes a call. 

At 4:18am, the world falls apart altogether. And it doesn't ever stop.


End file.
